I want to create a classroom site. I've been working with the google site template but am not too pleased with it. I want to customize it, but there's not too much you can do with it. What site would you recommend using? :help:
definitely TEACHERWEB!!!! it costs $39 for the year but it's so user friendly. there's also an email feature where parents can click on the email site (they don't have to memorize your email address or anything) they type there message and it sends it to whatever email you want to. i absolutely love teacherweb, i'm in the process of designing mine for next school year. Actually, you can sign up for a free trial for 30 days.
you can customize almost everything on a google site, what do you need help with? here is mine https://sites.google.com/site/mrsrakowski/
- I don't like the headers on the page. When I try to change it, it will only let me change the font but not the placement. - I also want to add a discussion board. I tried to use the help menu, but it only told me what I already knew. - I don't like the url. I'm not giving up on it just yet, but I am growing weary. Thanks so much for your help.
so the one i know the answer to right now is url. the first step is to purchase the url you want. if you own it already that works too. http://www.steegle.com/websites/google-sites-howtos/googlesites-frequentlyaskedquestionsfaq#TOC-How-do-I-change-my-site-s-address-U This has instructions for that.
Ok, I have been looking into discussion boards, what are you using this for? I have found a few options, but not sure which to give you directions for.
I use Google sites to create my web page and I'm pleased with it (once I figured out what to do what I wanted). Last time I posted a link to my site on another thread, my post was pulled, but I see others have posted their site, so I'll try again. Our tech teacher used the blogspot from google to create a dicussion board. I have researched forums for teachers to use with their classes and there are some decent ones for free that have good filters and walls. You would simply post a link from your site to the forums. Good luck! Here is my site if you need ideas. http://sites.google.com/site/gardnerscience/
I have a teacherweb site with a discussion board. If you want to take a look at it PM me and I will give you the address.
For a site, you might want to just put like $5 a month towards some nice cheap webhosting + $10 a year for a domain, then you can do whatever you want. It's rather easy to make a website too.
I use teacherweb, too. I love it. Having said that, I am taking a class this week and we made a wikispaces site today. I liked it, too. It's easy, but there isn't as much freedom as teacherweb. Here are my sites: www.snipurl.com/kasserman http://missk102.wikispaces.com/
I have used wiki spaces and it was useful but not perfect. This year, I am going to try edmodo. It looks good to me. It's free, the kids don't need to have email addresses, it looks like it has a variety of functions, and then if necessary, I'll link to google docs.
I used wikispaces last year with my class, and I ended up shutting it down about half way through the year. The students had their own e-mail, but I had no way to monitor their discussions. I ended up with a big problem with inappropriate e-mailing. I also went in and delete all the student accounts manually after sending home a note to parents about what was happening in my class. So just be aware of students e-mailing each other. I developed my website using Microsoft Expressions. Yahoo is my host for about $12 a month. I like the freedom I have by using Expressions. I learned about a website called glogster. It allows students to do online posterboards (for lack of better description). Has anyone used this with their classes? If so, what did you think of it?
You can do about anything you want with Wordpress (free). It is WYSIWYG but not as intuitive as GoogleSites. If you consider yourself techie, you won't have any problems.
I also have a google site and enjoy it. I am going to also play around with the discussion thing I've wanted the exact same thing but more for reading than anything. I would like for the kids to be able to post books they've read and comments about them for other students to comment on as well. Here is my website, but I still have some work to do: http://sites.google.com/site/aak4th P.S. - anyone that has used googlesites, do you know how to change the size of what appears on the front page? They are all the same size on their respective pages, but on the homepage some parts have larger fonts than others...this has been bugging me for awhile now.
I have a teacher web. I've also made websites using wordpress, yola, and weebly. Those are all free. The wordpress is the most restrictive, the weebly was okay to use, but yola is by far the easiest to manipulate and you can change the banner and background on almost all of their templates. I like it so much that I'm considering changing to yola for my class website after two years with teacher web.
Wait! I don't use teacher web. I tried it out but didn't like it too much. I use myteacherpages. It looks cleaner that teacher web to me.
Thanks. I visited your site and got some ideas. Yours is the first that I've seen that did not look just like the classroom template. That's what I'm looking for, something that looks more custom.
Bros could you be a litte bit more specific. Do you have any webhosters that you would recommend? Thanks.
if they allow HTML: <font size=0>text</font> Sure. Here is an excellent webhost that I recommend: http://apisnetworks.com/web_hosting_packages However, if you want something that is a bit more intuitive: http://www.stablehost.com/shared-hosting.php The basic plan might be good. It includes a web site builder along with Softalicious (A program in which you just click a button and it installs software that you pick from a list)
I use Webs.com--- the version I'm using is free, but since its linked to a paid site I'm using for another purpose it took the ads off of mine They have a lot of different formats, you can change the background, add music to each page individually, link to other pages, upload document files and post them, and it has various different applications like blogs, discussion forums, and even one application that lets your clients (or in this case parents) set up an appointment.
I have used teacher web in the past but, didn't keep up with it very well. I am not going to be renewing it, will look into something that is free. I have some friends at school who use the scholastic sites, they like them. The web site has just always been hard for me to keep updated.
I have used glogster- what I like is that the teacher has ultimate control of all of their student accounts. It is a bit difficult to teach to the students. What I ended up doing was giving them 10-20 minutes to "play" and find things, and then the students took turns showing what they had found. It taught me some things that I hadn't noticed.
I have webnode...I use the free version. It's really easy to use and there are lots of options. Feel free to check my site out, although I haven't updated it since right before school was out. That's on my to do list for the next few days! www.mrshickmansclass.webnode.com
Mine is through Schoolworld and I love it! It's $39 a year. It's easy to navigate. You can add pics, files, links, a blog. I'll pm you my site. =)
Thank you!!! I just went through and got rid of all the stuff from last year and changed the template. I'm still in playing around mode with it since I'll only be teaching Math/Science this year. I'm not sure how I want to change it up. :thanks:
TeachinHicks - I love it! :thumb: I can't believe it's a free one too. Is there anything it doesn't do you wished it did? Can you upload unlimited content? (I had to pay extra to upload more mb). I may be changing to that one. :thanks: (Right now I pay $39 for the site plus $20 for an extra 100 mb. I also pay $25 for a Flicker account for all the extra videos and pics.)
There is a limit on the amount of storage space for the free account. You can buy more storage, but I haven't found it necessary to do that. I try to cycle the pictures as we do things. Once I get my room set up, I'll take down the pictures of last year and put the "classroom tour" pictures up. Then once we get into stuff, I'll change out the pics again. I also had a whole semester worth of newsletters(in Word docs) uploaded and linked to it. If you poke around the site I'm sure it would tell you how much it is for more storage. Thanks for all the positive feedback!!! Now if I could get the rest of my team to make theirs...
I just switched to teacherweb in June and I love it! It is very easy to set up and it looks very put together. I didn't use the previous class website a lot because it was a hassle to edit the pages, but this year it will be a lot better.
My school uses it - we introduced it last year, and most of the teachers seem to like it. PM me with your e-mail - I think I have the training powerpoint our librarian used when showing us glogs.
